• A conservative is someone who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.

-- Alfred E. Wiggam

• With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

-- Steven Weinberg

• We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart.

-- Henry Mencken

• Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

-- Voltaire

• The dominant voice in any society is that of the beneficiaries of the status quo

-- Noam Chomsky

• The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

-- Noam Chomsky